DA: Body found on Sandwich beach was headless, limbless

The body discovered Wednesday night on a Sandwich beach was headless and limbless, say authorities as they follow leads in the case while asking the public for help.

Craig Salters csalters@wickedlocal.com @UpperCapeNews

The body discovered Wednesday night on a Sandwich beach was headless and limbless, say authorities as they follow leads in the case while asking the public for help.

Cape and Islands District Attorney Michael O’Keefe described the unidentified victim as an African-American male between 5-feet10 and 6-feet tall. The victim weighed between 220 and 230 pounds and had a 3- to 4-inch scar on his abdomen related to a past surgery. Sandwich police and Massachusetts State Police detectives assigned to the district attorney’s office found the torso affixed to a blue moving dolly at approximately 8 p.m. Wednesday night on Town Neck Beach.

“The body’s head was missing. Both arms were missing. Both legs were missing,” O’Keefe said at a press conference held Friday afternoon at the Barnstable County Courthouse.

O’Keefe, along with Sandwich Police Chief Peter Wack and detectives working on the case, asked for the public’s help in providing more information. Specifically, O’Keefe asked anyone who might have noticed unusual activity – say, erratic driving – in the Town Neck area between Monday and Wednesday to step forward. Additionally, someone may recognize the blue moving dolly or know something about the victim’s clothing, described as black sweat pants and a blue t-shirt from a Rhode Island-based company, Cranston Windustrial.

“This is a fairly recent event,” said O’Keefe, who added that authorities were looking for leads throughout the New England area.

“We want to cast a fairly broad net on this,” O’Keefe said.

The t-shirt, said O’Keefe, is roughly “six to eight years old” and was widely circulated by the company. The district attorney emphasized that the company has been fully cooperative in the investigation and that all of its employees had been interviewed.

O’Keefe said there is no question that Town Neck Beach is “a secondary crime scene” and that the body had been discarded there. In response to questions, O’Keefe said the body was found wrapped in tarp and trash bags but that, contrary to some earlier reports, there was no duffel bag involved.

Wack said residents of Town Neck and Sandwich are safe but that patrols have been stepped up in the area and the department is working closely with the district attorney’s office.